October 2 Chouette Report

The game was a modest success – Lucky Labs is probably a better place to hold games than Circa 33. The parking situation is better, the lighting is better, not quite as noisy, wider food selection. But the beer is maybe not as good, or at least not as many options. We’ll probably have the next chouette at the same location.

Mark F, Martin, and I played. Thanks to them both for their patience in teaching me how a chouette works, and for every time I needed a couple of minutes longer than them to do a pip count. Those guys are fast!

Here’s what I learned:

The “buy-in” wasn’t meant to be a “buy-in”, it was more a guideline on what to have on-hand to settle when the game ends. The actual required to settle was quite a bit below that.

We used a rule that no consulting was allowed before a double was in effect. I would suggest we amend that to allow sharing the pip count at any time – I held up the game more than once while working toward the same answer they had already reached.

Score-keeping: initially I was concerned to track the actual change per game in addition to the running total. Only the running total really matters. I also was tagging who was the Box and the Captain per game, which I think was a good idea.

We need to be clearer up front how long the match is to run. We didn’t discuss until about 2 1/2 hours in, when I promised another half hour to hour of play. Well, I actually held out almost 4 hours. But it’d have been more fair to set that we were going for 4 hours at the outset. As it was, felt like I was busting up the party.

As I said, next time we’ll have a lot more advance warning – aim to schedule a couple of more Chouettes in this year, and get onto a regular schedule in 2017.